


In The Distance, A Song

by DuendeJunior



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, unsubtle bird imagery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-11
Updated: 2019-02-11
Packaged: 2019-10-26 07:39:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17741702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DuendeJunior/pseuds/DuendeJunior
Summary: Once, there was a man named Yuuri Katsuki, who walked through worlds.





	In The Distance, A Song

**Author's Note:**

> this one is inspired by George R. R. Martin's short story "The Lonely Songs of Larren Dorr", which can be found on volume one of the _Dreamsongs_ compilation  
> many thanks to [jenny](https://archiveofourown.org/users/victuurikatsu), [nora](https://archiveofourown.org/users/agasthiya), [kaleigh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pocoloki), and all the wwv server folks who witnessed the birth of this fic and held my hand thru the writing process, and a warm hug to [ollie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/postingpebbles) for her loving corrections

Once, there was a man named Yuuri Katsuki, who walked through worlds.

An iron circlet, which was adorned with little jagged spikes, rested upon his head. It had belonged to his mother, and by right it should have gone to his sister after their parents’ passing. But Mari herself had put it on his head.

“My destiny lays elsewhere,” she had said to him at the dawn of the day she was to begin her travels. “Take care, little brother. I shall send a message if I ever need you.”

She never did.

And here he is, going through yet another gate between worlds, trying to follow on her footsteps.

It is because of the circlet that Yuuri is mostly unharmed now. His cloak is in tatters, his sleeves torn, his arms and legs are covered in scabs and dried blood, and a long claw grazes his back before the passage closes behind him with a _whoosh_ – but he is alive. Still alive.

There are patches of grass and some moss under his feet and the path he stumbled into seems to go up and up, but he doesn’t think of it as he moves forward, trying to put as much distance between himself and the gate as he can. A lone bird sings somewhere above, its melody high and haunting. There’s no other discernible sound other than it and his uncertain footsteps.

He manages to get to the top of the hill, falling on his knees beside a tall oak tree. He leans into the bark, and when he looks up it’s like its branches touch the violet sky above – yet another strange thing about this quiet world.

In the distance looms a castle.

Two towers pierce the heavens, turned into thin shadows by the setting sun, and below them a gate that seems much too large for the building. He can’t find any signs of other entrances, of windows, of life.

Or maybe his tired eyes deceive him.

A cold gust of wind bites at Yuuri’s skin, making him shiver. He should try and find some water to drink and clean himself with, and someplace to spend the night. At the foot of the hill begins a forest that seems very promising, but Yuuri feels heavy like metal being drawn to a magnet, and he doesn’t know if he’d be able to take another step.

He hugs his legs, resting his head on his knees, and his eyes close against his will.

–

When Yuuri opens them again, it’s to the feeling of velvet against his cheek and a strong voice humming the same birdsong he heard earlier. He moves his feet and only feels air around them, instead of solid ground.

He lets out a high-pitched noise of surprise. “Who are you?” Yuuri asks. He tries to free himself from this stranger’s arms, but whoever it is has a firm grip on him.

“Worry not, traveller,” the stranger says. “The Hunter has no dominion over these lands.”

Yuuri looks up to find finely-sculpted features, arranged in a show of strength and determination. In the dim twilight, the stranger’s hair seems kissed by the moon above, and their nose looks slightly crooked and all the more handsome for it. “I’m taking you to the castle so you can get some rest. They cannot enter there.”

“And how do you know that?”

The stranger smiles. “I made sure of it.”

Yuuri is tense like a live wire, but exhaustion is catching up with him again. He wants to stay awake and see for himself if the castle is safe, he wants to roll to the ground and run, he wants...

He wants Mari and his parents back, and he wants to cry.

He does his best to keep his eyes open until they cross the castle gate. Then, he surrenders himself to oblivion again.

–

Yuuri comes to on yet another soft surface – some kind of mattress this time. The fur on the covers tickles his nose, and the pillow under his head smells like herbs and warmth. The slight prickle on his scalp suggests that the circlet is exactly where it should be.

He moves his body under the covers, slowly, one limb at a time, and there’s no pain or discomfort to be found.

He opens his eyes to find a roaring fire on the fireplace next to the bed, its strong flames warming up the room and filling it with light. He puts an arm out of the covers and looks at it, surprised to find all the dried blood and small cuts gone.

“I healed you,” a voice says. “And I asked my servants to clean you up, so you’d be more comfortable in your sleep.”

Yuuri sits up at once, the furs sliding down his chest and pooling around his waist, and sees the stranger sitting on a chair across from the bed. They wear a green overcoat that looks like velvet, probably what Yuuri felt while he was being carried, and it’s all trimmed with gold and silver, like constellations coming to rest around their body. Their crossed legs are covered by black slacks and tall boots. And they are staring at Yuuri intently. There seems to be a sadness in their eyes, but it could be a trick of the light.

“Where am I?” Yuuri asks.

Another smile. “You stumbled over the lands that belong to a man called Victor Yakovlev Nikiforov. Which is to say, this is my world.” He bows slightly, in lieu of greeting. “And I assume you are Yuuri Katsuki.”

Yuuri pulls the covers closer. “How do you know that?”

Victor touches his own head, and Yuuri’s hand flies to his circlet. Victor nods. “The gods cannot enter here, but rumours are more light-footed. I have followed your adventure for many turns of the moon, now.”

Yuuri looks around the room. He can’t detect any signs of traps or anything that shouldn’t belong to a room, other than the curious absence of windows. None of that means he’s completely safe, of course. Being a little suspicious has never failed him before.

He looks down and notices the clean clothes on his body. “How did your servants change my clothes without waking me up? I’m a light sleeper when on the road.”

“My servants have no physical body to speak of. Their touch is light enough not to alarm someone – unless I wish so.”

Yuuri licks his lips. They feel cracked, dry, and so does his throat.

In an instant, Victor is at his side, picking up a clay bottle that rested over the nightstand and filling a tall glass of water. “My deepest apologies,” he says, handing Yuuri the full glass. “I should have offered you some water first.”

The liquid is cool on Yuuri’s lips and tongue, and he drinks it in big gulps. “No, I’m the one who’s sorry,” he says when he finishes. Victor puts the glass back on the nightstand. He fidgets a little with his hands after, and Yuuri moves over to make space for him on the bed, in case he wants to sit down there. “I should have thanked you first for saving me, but here I am being rude and questioning your motives.”

Victor looks at him. “You are right to ask, Yuuri Katsuki.” This close, the sadness seems more palpable than before. “Many times I have witnessed what the gods can do to a person.”

He goes back to the chair and sits down again, legs crossed.

“Are you the master of this world?” Yuuri says.

Victor drums his fingers on the arm of the chair. “I am the only one left,” he says, looking at the fireplace instead of at Yuuri. “I can be whatever I want.”

Silence stretches between them.

A head-splitting yawn takes Yuuri by surprise.

Victor’s expression turns back into an apologetic one. “And now I should let you rest properly. Forgive me, it’s been too long since I’ve last played host.”

“No, it’s fine,” Yuuri says. He rubs at his eyes to dispel the sudden sleepiness. “I want to know more about this place.”

“I’ll still be here tomorrow.” Victor says. “I can even show you, if you want.”

Yuuri nods. It’s getting harder to resist the pull of the heavy covers.

“It is set, then.” Victor stands up from the chair. “For now, goodnight, Yuuri Katsuki.”

The last thing Yuuri sees before falling into a dreamless slumber is Victor, standing by the bedroom door.

–

The cold rays of the sun wake Yuuri up the next morning. The windows that had been absent from the room the night before are there now, letting him see the vast expanse of land around the castle, with the hill Victor found him on being a dot in the distance, and the pale lilac sky beyond.

He casts the covers aside and finds next to the bed two types of shoes: a pair of house slippers and a pair of sturdy leather boots. There’s no sign of his own threadbare footwear.

He debates not putting on any of the options presented – old as they were, those shoes were _his_ – but Victor said he could show him the castle, and perhaps the rest of that world, and doing so with bare feet wouldn’t be wise. Yuuri’s had to do that once or twice; he knows.

He ends up choosing the boots.

There are also clothes for him over the chair Victor occupied yesterday: undergarments, a pair of soft slacks, a white shirt and a blue coat that matches the one he saw Victor wearing the night before. Yuuri also puts them on, the trepidation at accepting such a thing not leaving his heart entirely.

The castle seems to be larger on the inside than Yuuri thought. He leaves his room, enticed by the smell of breakfast coming from the floor below, and he ends up going through twice the number of corridors he imagined he’d find. Some of them are decorated with colorful tapestries hanging from high ceilings, depicting battles and scenes of ordinary life, and all of their rooms are furnished for kings and princes. Others, however, have only bare floors and stone walls, cold to the touch. Yuuri doesn’t dare venture into those.

At last, Yuuri finds Victor eating and sits beside him at the large table. There’s breakfast enough for four of them over it, at the very least.

“I used to have many guests, once,” Victor says when he notices Yuuri measuring both table and breakfast with his eyes. He chews on a piece of bread, brown and freckled with grains. “It’s good to have them again.”

Yuuri blushes a little. “I did not mean to judge.” He fiddles with the teapot to have something to do. “But I won’t be here for long. I have to find the next gate.”

“I know,” Victor says. There’s something in his voice Yuuri can’t quite identify. “You search for something.”

Yuuri takes a sip of the tea. It’s rich and golden; it reminds him of his mother smiling at them, so many years ago. “My sister,” he says.

Mari, who was out there fighting a battle against the gods, the last time Yuuri heard. Mari, who doesn’t know he’s looking for her.

“I can help you find the gate.” Victor sets down a buttered piece of bread and looks at him. “Sometimes they change locations, but I can feel where they settle. However...”

Yuuri bites his lip.

“I would like for you to stay for a bit. You should not fight a guardian of the gate with a weary soul, or so they say.”

It’s not a saying Yuuri’s familiar with, but it makes sense. Guardians prey on the weak.

“I can give you a month,” he says. Yes, a month. Not too long, and enough for Mari not to scold him for thinking her too frail to hold on when he finds her.

Victor smiles at him again. It’s a slip of a thing this time, small and almost sad. Yuuri’s heart hurts for him. “I wouldn’t ask for anything you didn’t wish to give. Thank you.”

–

After breakfast, Victor goes to change to his hunting garb, and they start their trek across the land.

They find the bird Yuuri heard singing the day he got there, a sparrow-like thing with bright grey wings.

“It has a name in many tongues, but not in this one we’re speaking,” Victor says. “It sings when it wants to find its mate, and it sings when it loses its mate.”

As if summoned, the bird’s mate appears. It’s smaller and darker, and it nestles on the branch beside its companion.

Yuuri smiles a little. “They’re beautiful.”

They keep walking, the terrain changing and crunching under their boots, and Victor explains that the birds are the only native species to this place. He has created many others through the centuries he’s seen, the ideas coming to his mind like wildfire, only to undo it all after a while. Only the birds remained.

The sky goes from lilac to a darker purple as the sun reaches its zenith. They stop near a stream, and Yuuri kneels to splash his face with cold water.

“Oh, the strawberries are already ripe,” he hears Victor say. He looks up to watch as Victor runs to a small bush to come back with a handful of fruit. He sits beside Yuuri on the wet grass, and offers him one.

“Is it safe?” Yuuri asks.

“I made it so.”

Yuuri takes it from Victor’s fingers and takes a bite. It’s a burst of flavor in his mouth, the perfect balance between sweet and sour, like spring come again.

A couple of tears escape his eyes, and Victor wipes them with his thumb.

“Sorry, it’s just…”

“I know.”

Victor lets his hand linger on Yuuri’s face. Under the pale sun, Yuuri notices his eyes are a shade of aquamarine he’s seldom seen before.

“Now I understand what the Singer has told me.”

Yuuri blinks. “The Singer talked to you?”

“Once, a long time ago. They were the last of the gods to turn their back on me.”

Yuuri nods. He doesn’t dare to breathe.

“When I closed the door on him, he cursed me to fall in love with the one who walks between the worlds.” He tucks a strand of hair behind Yuuri’s ear. “It’s how I first heard of you.”

Yuuri’s mouth opens in a perfect “o.”

“And it’s interesting,” Victor goes on.

“What is?”

“How it doesn’t feel like a curse.”

Yuuri doesn’t know who reaches out first. Only that their lips meet in the middle.

–

The castle is alive, Yuuri finds out later.

Not alive in the same sense that he or Victor or the birds are alive, with a beating heart and lungs that breathe, but more subtle, like the land itself. It keeps the rooms they’re in warm and livable, along with Victor’s servants, and it _moves_.

Victor shows it to him a few days after their trip to the forest, when the moon is thinning in the sky. It takes longer for the moon to disappear and reappear again in this world, Yuuri’s learned.

They’d spent that night tangled under the covers on Victor’s bed, his broad chest against Yuuri’s back, his lips pressing kisses to whatever part of Yuuri he could reach.

“Have you ever seen the sea?” Victor had asked between kisses.

Yuuri ran his nails along Victor’s arm. “I grew up on a seaside town,” he’d said. “I used to hear the gulls cry every morning as I walked to school.”

Victor kissed right under his ear, making him shiver. “Do you want to see it again?”

Yuuri thought for a moment.

“Yes,” was his answer.

And so Victor gave the order. And to the sea the castle went.

Had Yuuri never felt the different types of magic across the worlds during his travels, he would’ve barely noticed the change – it was more of a displacement of air, a shift in the aura around them, than the building growing wings and flying. He knows they’ve arrived when the smell of brine reaches his nose.

Yuuri drapes himself in one of the furs and gets up, Victor right behind him, to go to the balcony. The castle rests over a tall cliff, the rocks below sharp and menacing, and further down, the waves. Leagues and leagues of saltwater, shining like a mirror under the sun.

Victor puts an arm around his waist. “Is it any different from your sea?”

“A little,” Yuuri says. _The one I know looks like your eyes._ “But it smells the same.” Like salt, like going to school, like running in the sand with Mari and his dog. Like home.

Victor squeezes a little, and Yuuri lets his head fall on Victor’s shoulder.

“I am thinking of adding a few gulls to the scenery,” Victor says. He puts a finger to his lips. “It’s been a while since I created anything.”

It takes a little time, but he does.

They don’t sing in the morning, preferring the late afternoon, but Yuuri has to hide his tears in the furs all the same.

–

They explore each and every corner of Victor’s little world together – from the caves of obsidian that litter the north to the waterfalls in the south, touching rock formations that look like flowers when seen from above, and walking down snowy paths hidden from view.

Every discovery in the landscape is matched by a discovery about Victor. The way he smiles just so when Yuuri gathers the courage to take him by the hand, the way he hums and pokes at things that can turn dangerous at any moment, the way his brow furrows in concentration when he creates something because Yuuri mentions seeing it somewhere before.

The way he looks when he thinks Yuuri is paying attention to something else.

And they talk. They talk of Victor’s long life in this world and others, his battles against the gods, and Yuuri tells him of his memories, of his parents’ examples and of Mari and her clear-headed determination.

It’s the longest and the shortest month Yuuri’s ever lived through.

“Tomorrow the moon will be full again,” Yuuri says. They’re sitting outside, under the blanket of stars, and every time Yuuri points at one, Victor sings its true name and its deeds to him.

“Yes,” Victor says, eyes on the sky.

Yuuri sits closer, their thighs touching. “What if you came with me?” He asks.

Victor looks back at him.

“I could use some help to find Mari,” Yuuri says. “And…” He holds Victor’s hand, swallows the knot that threatens to form in his throat. “You wouldn’t need to stay here alone. It’s a heavy burden to bear.”

He keeps his eyes on Victor’s hand under his, and feels Victor’s lips touch his temple.

“You don’t know how much I wish I could go with you, Yuuri,” he says. His voice trembles. “I’ve tried to leave in the beginning, more than once. But all roads lead me back here.”

“I have the circlet,” Yuuri argues.

“It’s magic is enough to protect and grant passage to one person.”

“And how can you know that?”

Victor sighs. His shoulders slump, and he looks tired, so tired.

“This is also a part of my curse. The gods have made it so.”

Yuuri tries not to cry.

–

They make love for the last time under the light of the moon, and Victor’s hair has never looked so resplendent. Yuuri keeps his eyes open the entire time, willing to burn the image in his mind forever, for the cold nights that are sure to follow.

–

The next day, the castle is back to the forest where Yuuri first saw it.

Victor’s servants have somehow repaired his old clothes while he wasn’t looking, and he can’t deny he missed the feeling of cool leather on his skin, but he keeps the boots Victor gave him. He also adds a new knife to his belt, sharpened with spider’s silk and moonglow.

When he closes the door of his room behind his back, Victor is waiting for him in the corridor.

“I shall take you to the gate,” Victor says.

Yuuri nods.

They go down the stairs in silence, passing through the same corridors Yuuri’s seen the first day he was there, their hands entwined. Yuuri doesn’t dare to look at Victor.

They traverse the empty courtyard towards a small door on the side of the other tower, a door Yuuri hadn’t noticed before. Perhaps it only manifested today.

“And here we are,” Victor says as they stop in front of it. He takes the heavy key that hangs from his belt and inserts it on the lock. He turns it once, twice, and when it makes a _click_ , he pushes the door. Inside, Yuuri can see the silent fog swirling around, daring him to go through it. Inside, there’s someone who’ll try to stop him again.

In the distance, a bird sings its song.

Yuuri takes a deep breath and turns to Victor.

“Thank you,” he says. His hand goes to Victor’s face.

“I should be the one thanking you,” Victor says. He kisses Yuuri’s forehead, his fingers tangling on the hair at the nape of Yuuri’s neck. “May you find your sister, and everything you’re looking for.”

Their eyes meet.

Yuuri pulls him down for a proper kiss, all desperation and fast heartbeat.

“I will find her,” he says against Victor’s lips. “I will find her, and I will come back to you.”

With a last lingering touch, he lets Victor go and walks towards the fog.

–

Once, there was a man named Yuuri Katsuki, who walked through worlds.

An iron circlet, which was adorned with little jagged spikes, rested upon his head. It had belonged to his mother, and by right it should have gone to his sister after their parents’ passing. But Mari herself had put it on his head.

“My destiny lays elsewhere,” she had said to him at the dawn of the day she was to begin her travels. “Take care, little brother. I shall send a message if I ever need you.”

She never did.

And here he is, going through yet another gate between worlds, trying to follow on her footsteps.

A new purpose has joined this first one, however.

His story isn’t done yet, and it is said it shall only end when the song of a a bird with grey wings echoes again in a quiet forest of a quiet world, and a man with moonlight hair heeds its call.

**Author's Note:**

> [tumblr](https://everymanwillbeaking.tumblr.com/)   
>  [twitter](https://twitter.com/misguidedLight)


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